Let’s face it. No one can replicate the one and only Ray Charles; therefore, it’s a no brainer that on her new album, The Blue Room, Madeleine Peyroux and her longtime producer Larry Klein take the opposite direction in reinterpreting Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, a cultural landmark album.

The mega hit “I Can’t Stop Loving You” is a perfect example. Whereas Charles built up the tune with his soulful, poignant reading, Peyroux strips the emotion down to its core and gives the lyrics a new life. The vibe is still heart-breaking, but in a much subtler way.

With “Bye Bye Love,” she slows down the tempo to focus on the song’s narrative and gives the tune an elegant swing courtesy of the tasteful accompaniment from Larry Goldings, Dean Parks, David Piltch and Jay Bellerose. With “Take These Chains,” however, she covers the tune in a mid-tempo rather than slow allowing Vince Mendoza’s sensational string arrangement to flow hypnotically around her voice.

In addition to covering Charles’s, Peyroux wisely selected newer materials that carry similar feels into the album. In her reading of Randy Newman’s “Guilty,” one could imagine how Ray Charles would have taken this song, elevated it with his soul and made it his own. While Peyroux reminds me nothing of Charles, she makes me want to go back to Brother Ray’s Birth of the Soul.

Trọng Bắc’s debut, Dấu Mưa, opens with an elegant rendition of Từ Công Phụng’s “Như Chiếc Que Diêm.” Trọng Bắc has a gentle baritone that blends in nicely with lyrical ballads. Having Dũng Đà Lạt behind the board isn’t a bad choice, especially when arranging his own tune, “Trong Mắt Em,” in an intoxicating bossa nova flavor.

Upon listening Trọng Bắc’s take on Diệu Hương’s “Xin Đừng Quay Lại,” Quang Dũng comes to mind. Like Quang Dũng, Trọng Bắc’s voice is quite charming and he knows how to maneuver his away around Diệu Hương’s romantic lyricism. Unlike Quang Dũng, however, Trọng Bắc doesn’t have the enunciating issue. Furthermore, Quang Dũng’s devlivery nowadays is so mechanical.

The debut closes out with Quốc Bảo’s “Còn Ta Với Nồng Nàn” showing some potentials for a homage singer rather than an innovative one. No crime in that.

I have been fan of the Happy Monday podcast. Josh Long and Sarah Parmenter are doing a fantastic job of brightened my Monday commutes. The latest episode with Rachel Andrew is quite nice. I have listened to Rachel in other podcasts and I am a fan of her work, but I really love her voice. Something about her British accent and perfect enunciation sound very soothing. I actually caught up with all of the Happy Monday episode. Keep up the good work, Sazzy and Josh.

Seven years after winning “Sao Mai Điểm Hẹn 2006,” Phương Linh releases her sophomore album, Tiếng Hót Từ Bụi Mận Gai, with intricacy, maturity and confidence.

Her take on Ngô Thụy Miên’s “Từ Giọng Hát Em” is the proof. Phương Linh’s strong, soulful voice soars and descends with such effortlessness on each note. The accompanying piano arpeggios and soft drum brushes bring out an intimate atmosphere. While the piece is not groundbreaking, Phương Linh’s performance is outstanding.

With Dương Thụ’s “Họa Mi Hót Trong Mưa,” Phương Linh shows off her range from alto to soprano. Sounding like a nightingale singing the rain when she uses her high register to imitate the bird’s voice. The simple strumming acoustic guitar is the perfect complement to her voice.

The arrangements, which were recorded live with the band, are a huge asset for Phương Linh. From the funk-jazz vibe on “Cánh Hoa Hồng Bỗng Gọi Tên Anh” to the bluesy-folksy fusion on Thuận Yến’s “Trái Tim Lang Thang” to the intoxicating waltz on Quốc Bảo’s “Niềm Đau Chìm Xuống,” the musical accompaniments enhance the singer’s voice as well as the album’s listening experience.

Two exceptional essays on web design and user experience. Oliver Reichenstein’s “Learning to See”:

In general, more advanced design is also less visible unless you’re looking for it. The customer doesn’t need to be bothered with the sketching and production of the object in order to use it. What the customer wants to understand is how the product is supposed to be used. There, the designer should aim to be as transparent as possible.

Kevin Goldman’s “Material Honesty on the Web”:

After the concepts are resolved through pen sketching, designers can work honestly with clients and design in the browser to bring the visual ideas and prototypes to life.

In the past month, I have the pleasure of working with the well-known Vietnamese painter Dinh Cuong and his sons to create an online presence for him. One of his sons, Chinh Dinh, reached out to me to create the site as a special gift for his dad. How can I turn down a project like that? He found me through this web site and it turned out that they also live in my area.

Since Mr. Dinh Cuong and his sons are artists, working on the site was an intriguing experience. For the first time, my client wants a much simpler layout than what I had expected, which works for me since I also appreciate clean, minimal design. It also makes perfect sense to let the attention focuses on the artwork instead of the site.

One of the challenges for the project is that they want to show the complete painting without having to scroll. The web is a fluid medium. We have no control of the users’ screen size. My initial Lightbox solution didn’t do it because it was too fancy (the opacity, drop shadows and limited room for the painting info). They also prefer to see the painting on the page rather than a pop-up.

Fortunately WordPress has a nice gallery feature out of the box. The image template gives me many options to style up the design. Because the paintings come in various sizes, the vertical ones are too long for the browser window. For my personal preference, I don’t mind scrolling to see more details of the work; however, the client prefers the works to be visible on the page, at least for most desktop users. To solve the problem, I put a constraint on the image height, which means a certain image can’t be taller than a preset size (600px for example) and the width needs to adjust to the height.

The site is responsive and the backend is powered by WordPress for the ease of updates. Without further ado, here is dinhcuong.com.

Last Thursday, five adults and three kids left two single houses, drove three hours to stay a two small condos for a few days. We dragged massive food along as well. All we did was watching the kids, eating and sleeping. It was still exhausted. Cu Dan had so much energy. He ran around all the time. We also avoided going out to eat because he would throw food all over the place. He can’t sit still for five minutes. With Cu Dao, we just gave him the iPod and he would sit still until we were done. Cu Dan isn’t into anything and he got bored so quickly. As a result, he would started to get real fussy. His voice is strong and extremely irritating. Nevertheless, we had a nice break.

After we got home yesterday, I immediately got back to work until two in the morning polishing up a client’s site. I am hoping to launch soon. Woke up three hours later and the ground was filled with snow. I snuck back in for a bit, but little Dan didn’t let me. He drank milk, peed and pooped. At that point I just woke up to shovel the snow. Our neighbor got home from her night shift and she shoveled her driveway as well. I am very envy of her husband. This lady does everything around the house. She shovels the snow in the winter and cuts grass in the summer. Last summer she even did paved the driveway herself. I hardly see the husband and their teenage daughter. I see her all the time working around the house. Whenever I see him, I just wanted to say, “Man, you’re one lucky basterd.”

An excerpt from the School of Art’s mailing list to students:

As you can imagine the start up cost to get a website for this type of service has a nice price tag. I would like to know if there is interest from the School of Art to showcase their talents by helping [us] create a website and platform much of the likes of Facebook.

Not a bad way of getting students to create something like Facebook for free or low cost.

Players: 2-6
Age: 12+ years

Contents

Game Board
100 Question Cards
50 Music Samples
6 Movers
1 Dice

Object

Answer questions about jazz to advance along the board. Player who reaches the final destination first wins.

Set Up

Each player selects a mover and sets it on the board’s start space.

Cards

There are four sets of cards. Each set has its own color and category.

• Album: Questions related to jazz albums
• Artist: Questions related to jazz artists
• Style: Questions related to jazz styles
• Terminology: Questions related to jazz terms

Audio

A jazz application that plays 10-second sample of a jazz tune. A smartphone or a computer with internet connection is required to access the application.

Board

The path is made up of spaces with the same colors as the cards with the exception of black and audio color. For the black space, the player gets to choose which question he wants to answer.

How to Play

Each player rolls the dice to determine who goes first. The highest roller starts. The first player rolls the dice and moves according to the number on the dice. The color of the space he lands on determines the question he would be asked. If the player provides the correct answer, he gets to roll the dice again and advanced until he misses the question.

Challenge

If one player lands on the same space as another player, he has two choices to make.

1. He could answer the question himself. If he answers the question correctly, he gets to advance and the other player gets sent back to the beginning. If he misses the answer, he gets sent back to the beginning.
2. He could challenge the other player to answer the question. If the other player answers the question correctly, he is safe and the challenger gets sent back. If the other player answers the wrong question, he gets sent back and the other player stays.

Bonus

For each audio challenge, each player only has to answer either the artist or the title of the tune. Once he answered the first part correctly he could answer the second part for a bonus point. If he answers the bonus point correctly he gets to advanced one space. If he misses the answer, he moves back one space.

To Win

A player must land exactly on the last red space. Once he is on the last red space, he must answer both parts (the title and the artist) of the audio challenge correctly to win.

Once the player reaches near the winning zone, he must roll the dice until he lands exactly on the last red space. Even if he couldn’t land exactly on the last red space, he could still answer the question related to his current space and roll again. If the player in the last red space gets the question wrong, he stays there and play continues as it is a normal turn.

I started to collect Vietnamese ballads arranged in jazz flavors over the years. Whenever I heard something jazzy, I just drag it into my “Visualgui.com Presents Viet Jazz” playlist, which now has 90 tracks, which takes 7.5 hours to get through. I am in the process of edit down the number of tunes, but here’s the list so far:
1. Ai Dua Em Ve/Thuy Vu
2. Ao anh / Le Quyen
3. Bai Khong Ten So 8 / Y Phuong
4. Bay Gio Thang May / Le Hieu
5. Bien Can / Nguyen Hong Nhung
6. Bong Ngay Qua / Quynh Hoa
7. Buon / Ho Ngoc Ha
8. Chan Tinh / Le Quyen
9. Chay Tron / Tung Duong
10. Chieu / My Linh
11. Chieu Nay Khong Co Em / Thang Long Bass
12. Chim Trong Muon Thua / Nguyen Ngoc Anh
13. Co Hong / Nguyen Thao
14. Con Mat Con Lai / Duc Tuan va Vua Lua
15. Con Tuoi Nao Cho Em / Trinh Vinh Trinh
16. Cuoi Cung Cho Mot Tinh Yeu / Thanh Ha
17. Cuoi dem / Tung Duong
18. Da Yeu / Toc Tien
19. Dau Chan Dia Dang / Thu Phuong
20. Dem Do Thi / Thanh Ha
21. Dem Hoai Vong / Tuan Ngoc
22. Du Nang Co Mong Manh / Nguyen Khang
23. Duyen Kiep / Anh Tuyet
24. Ghen / Duc Tuan
25. Gui Gio Cho May Ngan Bay / Ngoc Quy
26. Ha Trang / Tran Thai Hoa
27. Hoang Vang / Tan Son
28. Huong lac / Le Cat Trong Ly
29. Huyen Thoai Nguoi Con Gai / Hong Hanh
30. Khuc Tinh / Tuan Ngoc
31. La Do Muon Chieu / Tran Thai Hoa
32. La Thu / Ngoc Quy
33. Lang dang chieu dong Ha Noi / Ngoc Anh
34. Lang Le / Ho Quynh Huong
35. Lau Dai Tinh Ai / Thuy Vu
36. LK Ai Ve Song Tuong – Toi Di Giua Hoang Hon / Nguyen Khang
37. Loi Ru Mat Em/ Tran Thu Ha
38. Mai Mai Ben Em / Le Quyen
39. Mau Dem / Jazzy Da Lam
40. Mo / Tung Duong
41. Mo Coi / Lieu Anh Tuan
42. Mong Duoi Hoa / Thuy Vu
43. Mot Coi Di Ve / Hong Nhung
44. Mot Doi Quen Lang / Khanh Ha
45. Mua Dong Cua Anh / Tan Minh
46. Mua Thu / Tran Thu Ha
47. Mua thu canh nau / Hong Hanh
48. Mua Thu Chet / Thu Phuong
49. Mua Thu Khong Tro Lai / Hoang Nhat Minh
50. Mung Xuan / Y Phuong
51. Nang Chieu / Ngoc Quy
52. Nang Thu / Thu Hoai
53. Nguoi Yeu Toi Khoc / Thuy Vu
54. Nhin Nhung Mua Thu Di / Hong Hanh
55. Nho Anh / Ho Quynh Huong
56. Nho Mua Thu Ha Noi / Thu Phuong
57. Nhung Buoc Chan Am Tham / Phuong Vy
58. Nhung Con Duong Nho / Hong Nhung
59. Nhung Khung Troi Khac / Nguyen Thao
60. Noi Long / Ho Ngoc Ha
61. Pho Ngheo / Tran Thu Ha
62. Phuc Am Buon / Anh Tuyet
63. Roi Mai Toi Dua Em / Tung Duong
64. Roi Nhu Da Ngay Ngo / Hong Nhung
65. Rung Xua Da Khep / Thanh Ha
66. Sang Ngang / Duc Tuan
67. Sau Y Biec / Tuan Ngoc
68. Se Hon Bao Gio Het / Nguyen Khang
69. Ta Ao Xanh / Tung Duong
70. Tam Su Nguoi Ca Si / Viet Hoan
71. Thoi / Nguyen Khang
72. Thu Quyen Ru / Mai Hoa
73. Tinh Ca Cho Em / Hong Hanh
74. Tinh Cam / Quang Dung
75. Tinh Lo / Thanh Ha
76. Toi Doc Bao Cong Cong / Nguyen Dinh Thanh Tam
77. Toi Tim Thay Toi / Ho Quynh Huong
78. Toi Voi Troi Bo Vo / Tran Thu Ha
79. Trang Khat / Tung Duong
80. Trong Co Don / Ho Quynh Huong
81. Tuoi Da Buon / Thanh Ha
82. Ve Em / Tan Minh
83. Vet Lan Tram / Anh Tuyet
84. Voi / Tuan Ngoc
85. Vung Lay Cua Chung Ta / Tran Thai Hoa
86. Xin Con Goi Ten Nhau / Duong Quoc Hung
87. Xin Mat Troi Ngu Yen / Anh Tuyet
88. Yeu Dau Theo Gio Bay / Hien Thuc
89. Yeu Nhau Di / Hong Hanh
90. 60 Nam Cuoc Doi / Phuong Vy